Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is envisioned as a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all. The DPLA planning initiative was launched in December 2010 with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The public launch of the DPLA will take place April 18-19 at the Boston Public Library. Daniel J. Cohen has been named executive director.

In 2011, CLIR’s Digital Library Federation (DLF) Program assembled one of 60 teams participating in a DPLA “beta sprint”—a call for ideas, models, prototypes, tools, and user interfaces that demonstrate how the DPLA might index and provide access to a wider range of broadly distributed content. The DLF Program’s beta sprint effort leverages content from more than 1,000 cultural heritage collections described in the IMLS Digital Collections and Content project.

The DLF Program is also participating in the DPLA Content and Scope Workstream. The workstream will identify content and articulate a collection development policy for the DPLA by confronting questions relating to the management of and access to distributed materials, research, and data curation. DLF Program Director Rachel Frick is co-chairing and DLF Program Associate Jena Winberry is coordinating the Content & Scope Workstream.